Cai
We’re playing footsie, except with both hands and feet. We’re spooned on the couch and Tansy’s nakedness is curled up against my side. She stacks her toes on top of mine and then lines up the base of her palm to measure against mine. “You have bigger hands than me.”
“I’m taller than you. Makes sense.” I twine our fingers and lift the combined hands. She comes with me as easily as if I were leading her in a kids game. “I kept growing after twelve.”
“Twelve! I don’t look like a tween.”
“You certainly don’t,” I say with an intentional leer at her perfect, perky tits. I cup one and duck to kiss the tip. I add a bit of tongue for good measure.
She shivers and shoves her free hand through my hair. Even when she’s greedy, she’s delicate, and her weight is barely noticeable. “Besides. When I was twelve, you were twenty-six. That’s creepy.”
“Ew!” I bolt upright. “What the hell?”
She smirks, her mouth turned up in the most adorable tease. She’s looking at me from under her lashes, and she leans back against the ample couch cushions, seeming more like the Queen of Sheba than the nymph she normally reminds me of. Watching her grow into herself is starting to blow my mind, bit by bit. She’s fascinating. “Do the math, sweetie.”
I pause. Compare my birth date to hers. “That’s a little much.”
“I promise I wouldn’t have hit on you.”
“You wouldn’t have been capable of it. Even if you thought you were trying.” I open my arms, and she returns to leaning into me. “I can’t picture twelve-year-old Tansy in Idaho.”
“I probably looked a lot like twelve-year-olds anywhere. Except less eyelashes. Curse of being a true redhead. My lashes were practically invisible until I learned how to use mascara without poking myself in the eyeballs.”
I laugh, then tilt her chin toward the ceiling. “Yup, wearing it now, aren’t you?”
“Always. I’ve been thinking about getting lash extensions.” She grins, but I think she’s also watching my reaction carefully.
“That’s a thing?”
“Yeah. They’re glued in one by one.” She looks down at our joined hands and draws a pattern across my palm. “Probably a waste of money.”
“If you’re expecting me to freak out, it’s not going to happen. Go be a girly girl. I think it’s sexy as fuck.” I’m rewarded with a pink flush across the tops of her cheeks and down her throat. She curls up even closer to my side, nuzzling her way under one of my arms. I squeeze her shoulders. “I put ink in people’s skin for a living. If that’s not a waste of money, some eyelashes sure aren’t.”
“How did you get into tattoos? As a job?”
“By getting into them being on my body first.” I push up the sleeve of my T-shirt. It’s the original Barbie doll in the black-and-white-striped swimsuit. The brunette version instead of the blonde though. “This was my first. A memorial for my sister.”
She touches the curve of Barbie’s hip, and I’m the one who catches the sensation. “She liked dolls?”
“Always swore that the very first thing she got with a physician’s paycheck was going to be a 1959. She already knew a vintage dealer she trusted who she was going to buy from.”
“Why Barbie?”
“Living the American dream.” I sigh. “So then I got a fenghuang on my back for my heritage, and then a couple others. I didn’t really want to leave the shops. I liked how laid-back everyone seemed. I mean, I found out eventually that was bullshit.”
Tansy pushes her hair back from her face so that she can lean on my shoulder. Her jaw cracks on a huge yawn. “What do you mean?”
“We’re all just as crazy or driven or whatever as picket fence America in our own way.” I like her curls. Petting them is like plunging my hand into a cloud. “Skylar, who runs the shop? She’s got too many balls in the air. She’s going to explode someday. We each have our secrets.”
“And yours is that you like BDSM?”
“Not really.”
She freezes like a trapped rabbit. I think even the tip of her nose twitches. “Does that mean you don’t like . . . what we did?”
There’s no way I’m letting this go by without explanation. I scoop her up and arrange her so that she’s sitting in my lap. Her butt is nestled across my thighs, and I hook an arm around her bent knees. “That is not what I said at all. I’ve liked it a fuck of a lot.”
That gets a giggle out of her, but she’s still avoiding my gaze. She twiddles with the top button of my vest instead. “‘A fuck of a lot’ seems like plenty.”
“A mega fuck-ton?”
“That’s good with me.” She glances up at me from under those mascara-ed lashes. “So it’s good with you?”
“Yeah. You can say that again.”
“But you haven’t done it before?” If she keeps at that button the way she is, twisting it back and forth, it’s going to pop off. I don’t try to stop her. “Because it seemed like you knew what you were doing.”
“I’m not going to lie and say I’m a saint or anything.” I push the ends of her red curls back over her shoulder. She’s dotted with orange freckles. “I’ve played in dungeons before. Sometimes I’ve bottomed.”
“What?” She jerks her head up on a little squeak. “That’s not right.”
I chuckle and pull her closer. She smells like sugar and a heavy dose of girl juices. “It was right for the moment. It wouldn’t be right with you.”
“I’m the first one you’ve . . . ordered around?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
I take my time thinking about it, remembering how she’d locked up that first time. The way she’d looked at me when I was in the shower and she knelt before me. The hard shot of pleasure that I’d felt at the sight. “It seemed like what we both needed.”
She keeps her head bent. Her jaw slides against my collarbone, but she doesn’t end up saying anything for a long moment. “I like it. But I worry that means there’s something wrong with me. After . . . after the way things used to be, shouldn’t I want to be calling the shots and be the one who starts everything? I should be bar hopping and taking home whoever I feel like. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
I wonder about the spaces between Tansy’s words sometimes. I don’t know what she means about ‘the way things used to be’ and I want to know in order to shore up her defenses. But I don’t think I can ask. Not now. I take what she’s offered me and no more. “Whatever you’re doing is the way it’s supposed to be. No matter if that was standing on street corners wearing a clown costume and turning somersaults.”
“Clowns are creepy.”
“Pink flamingo costume.”
“Much better.” She kisses the side of my neck in the soft space underneath my jaw. “Though I don’t think a flamingo would survive a somersault.”
“Might be worth watching.”
I brush my mouth over hers. She’s sweet as sin and twice as tempting. I can’t seem to go very long without having my hands all over her. Her neck tilts, and it’s like I have every bit of her open to me. She’d give me anything.
It’s heady and distracting and almost overwhelming. I want to take and take without giving. I teeter on the edge between greediness and needing to nurture her. It’s different from moment to moment. I wonder if that’s what makes her different.
I wonder if I’ll ever tell her that she’s different.